Brown's Daily Word 1-2-08

Happy New Year again.
I love to read some of the Old English Classics. Daniel Defoe’s seventeenth-century novel Robinson Crusoe is filled with God’s presence. Crusoe is a man who rebels against his parents to become a sailor. He joins up with a ship to set out for the Seven Seas in search of adventure. He becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck, condemned to live out his days on a desert island. – Crusoe, begins to contemplate time and eternity. The book Robinson Crusoe is full of his thoughtful, probing encounters with God – his weaknesses, fears, temptations. It explores how Crusoe learns to love God and the world. He is someone who runs from God and who cries out to God. The psalmist writes, ’Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone – as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear Him. His salvation extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to His covenant, of those who obey His commandments’ (Psalm 103:15–18). The writer of Ecclesiastes states beautifully that ’God has placed eternity in our hearts.’ And because God has placed ’eternity in our hearts’, we know that nothing of ’time’ will permanently satisfy us. Life derives its true meaning not from self-fulfillment or success, but from a personal relationship with our Creator. As C. S. Lewis once said, ’If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’ There is a story in the life of Jesus, recorded in John 5:2–9. ’Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people – blind, lame or paralyzed – lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew how long he had been ill, He asked him, "Would you like to get well?" ’’I can’t, sir," the sick man said, "for I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get there, someone else always gets in ahead of me." ’Jesus told him, "Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk!" ’Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up the mat and began walking.’ The man had been lying there for thirty-eight years, his eyes staring at the water; his gaze fixed on his only hope of something better. The very cause of his need prevented him from having that need met. Suddenly, his world is interrupted by a voice asking him if he wants to be made well. What a strange question! Surely, the answer is obvious? But his answer is revealing: it’s not ’Yes, that’s what I’ve been longing for,’ but a statement of the problem as he sees it – he has no one to help him into the pool. Originally, all he wanted was to be healed, to walk and run as others could. Now, all he wants is someone to help him in to the water. The pool has become the object of his longing, and he cannot see any other solution to his problem. Sometimes, the search, however wearying and unfulfilled, becomes everything for us. In fact, all he needed was a word from Jesus and, in an instant the pool, which had been his hope and his despair for thirty-eight years, seemed unimportant. No matter how hard we try, we cannot pull ourselves out of the quicksand of time. That is why we need someone to change the way we see things, to lift our eyes, so that we can peer beyond time and be led towards eternity. That someone is Jesus. Our search for eternity brings us to Him. Jesus said, ’I am the way, the truth and the life.’ Life with Christ is an endless hope; without Him, it is a hopeless end.


In the movie "The Last Emperor," which my children loved to watch, the young child anointed as the last Emperor of China lives a life of luxury with a thousand servants at his command. ’What happens when you do wrong?’ his brother asks. ’When I do wrong, someone else is punished,’ the boy replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of his servants is beaten. In Christianity, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace was free only because the giver Himself bore the cost. In St Paul’s Cathedral in London hangs Holman Hunt’s painting, The Light of the World. It is a picture of a cottage that is run down, and bushes and briars have grown around it. The path is covered by weeds and grass. Standing at the door, Jesus is holding a lantern in one hand that gives off light to every part of the picture, and He is knocking with the other hand. After Hunt completed the picture, one discerning critic said to him, ’Mr Hunt, you made a mistake. There is no handle on the door.’ The artist replied, ’No, I did not make a mistake, for there is a handle. The handle is on the inside.’ Once a little girl and her father were standing in the cathedral. They were mesmerized as they looked at the painting. Then the girl asked, ’Daddy, did they ever let Him in?’ God our Father is the maker of everything that exists. He is the Author of the world of nature, and the Creator of both space and time. Without God, there would be no past, present or future: no summer or winter, spring or autumn, seedtime or harvest. There would be no morning or evening, or months or years. Because God gives us the gift of time, we have the opportunity to think and to act; to plan and to pray; to give and to receive; to create and to relate; to work and to rest; to strive and to play; to love and to worship. Too often, we forget this, and we fail to appreciate God’s generosity. We take time for granted and fail to thank God for it. We view it as a commodity and ruthlessly exploit it. We cram it too full, waste it, learn too little from the past, or mortgage it off in advance. In doing so, we also refuse to give priority to those people and things which should have chief claim upon our time. We need God’s help to view time as He sees it, and to use it more as He intends. It is crucial to try to distinguish between what is central and what is peripheral; between what is really pressing, and what can wait; between what is our responsibility and what can be left to others; and between what is appropriate now and what will be more relevant later. We need God to help guard us against attempting too much, because of our false sense of our indispensability, our false sense of ambition, our false sense of rivalry, of guilt and inferiority. We also need God to help us not to mistake our responsibilities, underestimate ourselves, or overlook our weaknesses and to understand our proper limits. We need to realize that, important though this life is, it is not all that there is. So, we should view everything we do in the light of eternity, not just our limited horizons. It is a matter of true perspective. God is not so much timeless, as timeful. He does not live above time so much as hold all times together. In Jesus, we live, move and have our being.
In Him and because of Him.
Brown

TOP STORIES
PM sends Staines’ widow letter on Orissa



By By OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Tuesday January 1, 01:09 AM
New Delhi, Dec. 31: In a somewhat belated assurance, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the government will take necessary measures to protect the religious freedom of all communities. The assurance has come in a letter he has written to Ms Gladys Staines, the widow of Graham Staines, the Australian missionary who was burnt to death along with his two sons in Orissa in 1999.

Ms Staines, who returned to Australia a few years ago, had written to the Prime Minister expressing anguish at the recent attacks on Christians and Church buildings and institutions in Orissa. In his letter, the Prime Minister has said: "We are taking all steps to ensure the restoration of normalcy and to bring about harmony and peace in the affected areas."

Also stating that he has spoken to the Orissa chief minister regarding the violence, Dr Singh said: "I assure you that the government of India will take all necessary steps to safeguard the fundamental rights and liberties of all sections of our society and protect their religious freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution. Please be assured that we will not tolerate any efforts aimed at disturbing the communal harmony or secular fabric of our country."

The Prime Minister’s letter to Ms Staines was released to the media by the government on Monday, also the day when a statement came from Mr John Dayal, a member of the National Integration Council and secretary-general of the All-India Christian Council. Mr Dayal, currently in Orissa, said a fact-finding team which included him had gone to the Phulbani area of Kandhamal district on Saturday but "was forcibly expelled by the inspector-general of police, Pradeep Kapoor, who ordered the Phulbani town police inspector to ensure that I left the district that night".

According to Mr Dayal, the town police inspector made the group follow an armed police escort for nearly an hour-and-a-half at night, finally leaving them on the border of Ganjam district. The experience, he said, left the team deeply distressed and frustrated.

Mr Dayal said the team had driven to Phulbani on December 29 and en route was able to assess the damage caused to the Carmelite Convent and the Carmel English School. Nuns the group interviewed told them of attempts that were made to set the convent on fire while they locked themselves inside a room.

As for the group’s meeting with Mr Kapoor, Mr Dayal said, "He would not allow me to proceed, or even to remain in Phulbani. He said it would not be safe for me, or for the persons with whom I would stay. He said the Rapid Action Force had been deployed in Phulbani town and I had to draw my inference from this fact about the situation and tension in the place."